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Ulfrich, one of the twin kings of the Bructeri, sat crosswise in his stool, slovenly drinking last year’s beer from a dirty mug. Around him were ten other men, remnants of his warband from the summer. He cursed as he swilled- ten men, out of a warband ninety strong. He had gotten his ass kicked but hard this past summer.
Udo, his twin, sat upon the throne. He too sat oddly, but unlike his brother who so sat due to his laziness and depression, Udo sat that way to relieve the pain of the healing wounds in his buttocks. It was a tremendous insult to be wounded in that place, and he had suffered that indignation not once but twice. So while Ulfrich drank and brooded and healed from his honorable wounds, Udo plotted and brooded and healed from his dishonorable ones.
“They will come back again,” Ulfrich muttered into his beard. “And this time they will finish it. We are out of good ideas on how to stop them, and too shattered from our attempt to repel them again. We are doomed.”
“We lost a lot of men this past summer,” Udo agreed, “but I am not going to roll over and die to please some sheet-clad fool.”
“Speaking of which,” Ulfrich said as he tried to stand. He failed, and plopped back into his chair. “Have you heard anything from your Eagle friend about their summer plans? It would be nice to know when we are going to die, don’t you think?”
“No, nothing, nor do I expect to,” Udo replied. He rose, cursed his twin’s drunken clumsiness, and strode to ease the pain caused by sitting too long. He looked at his brother, healed but broken, and sighed. He needed to make him active. It hit him. “Ulfrich, how many men do we have left?”
“Counting my Companions?” he slurred. “Forty two.”
Udo crossed quickly to his brother and hauled him upright. “How many warriors do we have, brother?”
Ulfrich sobered a bit at the rough treatment. “We have about six thousand left, out of a warhost once sixteen thousand strong.”
“And how many Bructeri men are not in the warhost?”
Ulfrich saw what his brother was aiming at. A full tribal mobilization. It would kill them over time, but could possibly save them in the summer- if the men were trained and ingrained with the vigor of a warrior. He grinned, “Another eight to ten thousand, brother.”
Udo released him to fall back into the chair in disgust. “So few? We once teemed in the tens of thousands!”
“That was before Uncle joined Seval in battling the roaches across the river,” Ulfrich reminded him. “He halved our strength, and we lost the rest this summer past. Damn that lucky roach! Had only my dagger cut deeper...”
“Had only the Witch not bought off Wenzel, nor warned Rutilius of Nevel,” Udo cursed. “This is all her fault. Has nobody seen her since her flight from the tower?”
Ulfrich shook his shaggy head. “No, brother. She disappeared into the land of the Sequani and has yet to resurface. Erwin is silent, and Georg has stopped bringing us news of the goings on in the Eagle nest. Nevel and Fredrik are dead, leaving only your friend in Rome to alert us to any threat. And he is silent, as you said.”
“We have nobody left to send to spy,” Udo said bitterly. “But we must know.”
“There is Halla,” Ulfrich remembered. “She is a vala like the Witch, and is more often right than wrong. We could try to consult her.”
“Halla... She is Marsic, is she not?”
“Aye, and was once a rival of Veleda. It is said her prophesies are always of our times- recently past or soon to come, unlike the Witch who saw the entire spectrum of history past, present and future. She successfully predicted the revolt of the Batavians, and then their demise. But she was wrong in their fate- she prophesied their utter obliteration, yet the peace left them relatively intact.”
“She also predicted our uncle would die, if I recall,” Udo remembered. “It was her words which brought us to the King’s Hall in time to be elected king in his place.”
Ulfrich snorted. “That took no Second Sight. Uncle charged across Father Rhein into a gap between two legions, the rear one armed with bows. No genius needed to see him die upon arrows.”
“Rutilius commanded that legion, did he not?”
Ulfrich nodded. “Aye. That Roman has been very good at pruning our family tree.”
“Halla said to me, ‘Your uncle will die wet, pierced by wood. His slayer would become mighty and plague you, unless you become king yourself.’”
“He died wet from swimming the Rhein, shot full of arrows, and you became king, though Rutilius still plagues us. She was wrong, brother.”
“Rutilius became mighty,” Udo corrected. “As she predicted. And he plagued us. And we are kings. They shall come again. The Romans must, because we are too few to bring the war to them. So they come again, and we shall kill them this time. Properly. And then, brother, the slayer of our uncle shall plague us no more.”
“How do you expect to slay his three legions?” Ulfrich snorted. “With but our six thousand? Twelve, if the tribe rallies?”
Udo smiled. “You forget the Chauci, and the Marsi. They lost men this summer, but they did not lose half their strength four years ago as did we. They have many, and they have pledged to come. We need but delay the Romans when they come, to allow our brethren the time they need to come to our aid.”
Ulfrich snorted. “Bah, they are still too few. Tis better we flee when the roaches come.”
“You coward,” Udo sneered. “We shall fight, for our land and our people. And our brethren shall come. I shall send forth envoys far and wide, once again, and tell them of our plans to defend our forests and our people.” He spun about to face his brother. “We have sent envoys before. We shall do so again. But it is not enough. You, brother, Slayer of Eagles, shall call out the tribe. Arm them. Then I shall train them, make warriors out of our men. Harden them by rebuilding the fake villages burned this summer.”
“And me?” Ulfrich wondered. Battles were his domain, campaigns that of his brother. Udo was infringing on his turf, and he did not like that at all.
“You, brother, shall do what you do best- hunt. Find me the Witch if you can, or bring me Halla if you cannot. A king’s word may be ignored. The visions of a vala, however, are ignored at one’s peril. We need us a vala, that our pleas for aid are heard. Find me a vala, brother, while I make the warhost ready.”
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Vespasian yawned.
To those around him, it looked like an owl preparing to devour a mouse- or given the size of Eprius, a rabbit. It was definitely not the kind of gesture the proconsular investigator deemed conducive to his report. But what could he say or do? It was the Imperator of Rome who he was boring with his report. So he read onward, reporting the faults and errors made in the recent campaign and hoped at least some of the blatant errors would be punished.
The Imperator turned to his son, the consul. “I concede that your choice was a better one,” he whispered. “Sending a prosecutor as an investigator results in this.”
“At least he brought us some facts we did not know,” Domitianus replied in the same whispered tones. “I do not know if Fulvus would have found them.”
“And in summation,” Eprius said finally, using his Forum voice to emphasize his displeasure at the reception his exhaustive report was receiving, “Cordinus seemed a decent enough peacetime administrator, but has no head for warfare. His campaign was flawed, his judgment worse, and only luck prevented the army for being destroyed.”
Vespasian rose awkwardly- his bones stiff from listening for two hours to the litany of charges and complaints that should have severe consequences, but by imperial order were only to be reported. The displeasure of the former prosecutor for the muzzling was evident- but in deference to imperial honor, was reserved for this room alone. In the Senate, his report was a glowing account of Roman ability defeating thousands of barbarians once again.
“I must ask, lord, why you sent me there to dig and scratch and bring to light the flaws that almost cost us a province, when it is evident you intend to do nothing about it?” Eprius asked.
Vespasian clapped his friend upon the shoulder, and let his hand remain there. “Titus, old friend, you produced a wonderful tale of poor judgment and criminal negligence, which was not your task. Your task was to find the facts. You presented those facts as a basis for your charges and allegations. That was all I required- and all you should have brought me.”
Eprius bowed. “My lord, you sent a prosecutor. A prosecutor seeks facts and analyzes them for court.”
“I have just admitted to my son that my choice was faulty,” Vespasian said by way of apology. “I remembered the detailed research you did for your cases, and how thorough was your fact-finding. I should also have remembered what you do with facts, but had forgotten. But you cannot help it, Titus- it is in your nature.”
He quirked an eyebrow to Eprius. “You did double-check those numbers, Titus?”
Eprius puffed up like an angered peacock. “Of course, Imperator. Do you think I would dare to bring falsehoods or incomplete facts to your attention? I would have failed worse in my duty than Rutilius Gallicus had! Three legates confirmed it. They had piled the German dead into heaps of twenty, and there were fifteen hundred piles.”
A leer crossed the owlish face of Rome’s mightiest man. “No German tribe numbers enough to leave thirty thousand dead without being extinct,” he said. “This can only mean one thing. My plan, Titus- it is working.”
“And which plan is that, Imperator?” Eprius asked innocently.
His charm did not work on one who knew him well, and Vespasian knew him very well. “That, my dear friend, is for the coming summer. Come, we must toast this news, and your return. A pity you just missed the Saturnalia, but we shall not disappoint you.”
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Marcus had a lot on his mind as he mounted his horse for the trip home to Colonia. First was his mission- gather intelligence. He had already started on this- before he left Vetera, he had penned off four letters, one to each legate. They were to interview anyone who had ties across the river- traders, merchants, hunters, explorers, anybody who had ever been in the area of interest. From these interviews, they were to build a consensus of the area and create from that a map, detailing the number of villages, their names and populations, and how many warriors were available. They were then to send their findings to him in Colonia, where he and his new aide would put them together. Three of the letters went out with the post. The fourth he hand-delivered to Decius Paullus there in the castrum before mounting up for the ride home to his wife and their children.
Thirty five Batavians and one Roman rode with him, his aide and his German Guard, of which he was extremely proud. Though he paid the Guard good wages, each was a volunteer, and new volunteers were tested to the utmost before being selected to enter the ranks of the guards. He had once eighty volunteers, men chosen by the Batavian prince Claudius Victor for their loyalty and ability, but he let those who wished or had family to remain behind in Noviomagus when he moved to Colonia. Fifty five came with him to Colonia, though twenty of those were left behind in Colonia to provide security for his family.
“Tell me, Dieter,” he asked his guard commander. “Why do we not have eighty men again? Too few volunteers?”
“We have had some,” the Batavian replied. “Some cannot ride, others ride too well but cannot fight. Most we just do not know, and we never let a man in that we do not know.”
“And how many Ubians do you know?”
Dieter scowled. “Fair point, lord. But you still draw breath, and that is because Batavians guard you. We once guarded the Imperators of Rome. What have the Ubians guarded except their own city, which they lost to Frisians?”
“A lot of Ubian men died fighting for Rome, and were not here to guard their own civitas,” Rutilius reminded him. “They are every bit as loyal as the Batavi- more so maybe, in that they remained loyal to Rome when all else was lost.”
Dieter scoffed. “Loyalty to a city is one thing, lord. Loyalty to a man is different. I give less than a rat’s ass for the whole of Rome. The buggers can burn the place down without me losing a second’s sleep over it. But you, lord, I would give my own life, if it would save yours. As will any man in your guard. Can the Ubians match that?”
“Give them a chance and they may,” Rutilius replied with a smile but no laugh. “I do not want to have to send to Rome for ex-gladiators to fill the ranks. The ‘German and Sandwarrior’ Guard just does not sound well.”
Dieter hung his head low and laughed. “You are correct. I shall recruit more. But first I will send word to Claudius Victor. Maybe there are some Batavian veterans with no families who would join. If any posts are still open, then and only then will I turn my eyes to the Ubians. The Batavian Guard sounds more exclusive that the Batavian-and-other-German Guards, does it not?”
Rutilius laughed. “Yes, it does.”
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